n to play a strathspey to which the company in
the true bucolic style beat time with feet below the table. He changed
to the tune of a minuet, then essayed at a melody more sweet and
haunting than them all, but broken ere its finish.

"A hole in the ballant," commented the Provost. "Have another skelp at
it, Factor."

"Later on perhaps," said Sim MacTaggart. "The end of it aye escapes my
memory. Rather a taking tune, I think--don't you? Just a little--just a
little too much of the psalm in it for common everyday use, but man!
it grips me curiously;" and then on a hint from one at his shoulder he
played "The Devil in the Kitchen," a dance that might have charmed the
imps of Hallowe'en.

He was in the midst of it when the door of the room opened and a beggar
looked in--a starven character of the neighbourhood parish, all bedecked
with cheap brooches and babs of ribbon, leading by the hand the little
child of his daughter wronged and dead. He said never a word but stood
just within the door expectant--a reproach to cleanliness, content, good
clothes, the well fed, and all who make believe to love their fellows.

"Go away, Baldy!" cried the Bailies sharply, vexed by this intrusion on
their moments of carouse; no one of them had a friendly eye for the old
wanderer, in his blue coat, and dumb but for his beggar's badge and the
child that clung to his hand.

It was the child that Sim MacTaggart saw. He thought of many things as
he looked at the little one, white-haired, bare-footed, and large-eyed.

"Come here, my dear!" said he, quite tenderly, smiling upon her.

She would have been afraid but for the manifest kindness of that dark
commanding stranger; it was only shyness that kept her from obeying.

The Chamberlain rose and went over to the door and cried upon the
landlord. "You will have a chopine of ale, Baldy," said he to the old
wreck; "sometimes it's all the difference between hell-fire and content,
and--for God's sake buy the bairn a pair of boots!" As he spoke he
slipped, by a motion studiously concealed from the company, some silver
into the beggar's poke.

The ale came in, the beggar drank for a moment, the Chamberlain took the
child upon his knee, his face made fine and noble by some sweet human
sentiment, and he kissed her, ere she went, upon the brow.

For a space the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the Boar's Head Inn was ill at
ease. This sort of thing--so common in Sim MacTaggart,who made friends
with every